Projector is a free color insert in the Chicago Reader and the Onion. It
comes bimonthly. This issue was in November, 1998.

This review was written by the Editor of Projector Magazine at that time,
Mr. Grant Samuelson.

Medium: Visual Art Exhibition and Lunch Wiener Girls: A Taste Sensation Seen-
The Wiener Circle: 9/14 The exhibition by the Wiener Girls (Katey Rafanello
and Sydney Croskery) at the Clark Street institution The Wieners Circle might
have been evidence that some artists are desperate to show anywhere. Actually,
it represented a return to a strategy made almost extinct by the transformation
of public space in America. Once upon a time, artists and curators discovered
the notion of intervention, in which an artwork would appear like a guerrilla
raid in a bar or in a public square. Taking the artwork out of the gallery
brought it back into the real world, which is where it came from in the first
place. But as the public spaces turned into privately owned "retail corridors"
and "historic downtowns", the act of taking art into the street became an
administrative process of sculpture, requiring permits and permission from
the owners of the sidewalk. It is now difficult to get a show in a coffee
shop without having to get a manager on the phone to "corporate". This is
a long winded way of saying the the Wiener Girls did a great thing by hanging
a few color photographs in a hot dog stand. Camouflaged as advertisements
or tasteless decorative art, the Wiener Girls' photographs were hung haphazardly
above the windows at the Wieners Cirlce in the only wall space available,
and were tailored to the exhibition space like a careully-considered installation.
The lurid photographs in their cheap frames were identified by laminated wall
labels that looked like they might also say, "Try our Delicious Onion Rings!"
Featuring the Wiener Girls like spokesmodels for the Beef Industry, the photos
themselves simulataneously transmitted a confrontational anti-sexist message
and celebrated the power of good comedy. The Wiener Girls: A Taste Sensation
was an elegant artistic intervention that briefly transformed a hot dog stand
into a cohesive work of art. It was a test of methods for casting off the
gallery and the museum, and it was also a good joke. It was a show of a couple
of women dressed in tight T-shirts, and it was also a challenge to artists
dissatisfied with the internal politics and complexities of the art world.
Make more shows like this.